“It’s not the fraud/embezzlement thing that bothered me, that’s sort of part of taxicab and capitalistic culture,” Kaplan wrote in an e-mail to Insider. “However, i think the combination of all the time he’s gonna serve, is absolutely not going to do him nor society any good. From my own experience, i can say, without a doubt, that Ed Jew, in SFcounty jail, will be placed into solitary, meaning an 8 x 3 ‘ cell, probably in K block, as a famous personage, and this housing is torture.”

Kaplan ought to know. He served about six months of a nine-month sentence after being convicted of threatening a passenger and operating an illegal cab, something Kaplan still denies. (Well, not the illegal cab part.)

So how did he come to camp in Jew’s driveway anyway?

“it was a struggle to just survive living out of my van; i was tired, and had to park somewhere to sleep; i chose Ed Jew’s driveway as a protest of the fact that he was not living in the city, while i was being ridiculed for being homeless here, and why shouldn’t i be able to park in his driveway? oddly, he was trying to start to make a show of living there, and actually happened to be there both Saturday nights, i slept in my van in his driveway.”